Regulatory Focus and Audience Morality: Examining Relationships Between Message Orientation and Moral Intuitions

Abstract

Moral foundations theory (MFT) is a psychological framework describing innate and modular moral intuitions. The current study integrates MFT with a motivational conception of morality to link it with regulatory focus theory. By combining these frameworks, we predict that a prevention-focused (vs. promotion-focused) advertising message will prime emphasis of moral domains for in-group loyalty, respect for authority, and moral purity among college students. The framework also suggests that emphasis of these three domains will be positively associated with favorable appraisals of prevention-focused messages. Results support the notion that prevention-focused (vs. promotion-focused) messages prime the three domains but contradict the expectation that these domains are positively associated with favorable appraisals of prevention-focused messages. Observations show that they are, rather, positively associated with favorable appraisals of the promotion-focused message. Discussion centers on interpreting these contradictory findings as well as the importance of moral psychology to advertising and communication literature.

Keywords:

• Advertising
• Audience Morality
• Consumer Psychology
• Moral Foundations Theory
• Priming

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Joel Lewis

Robert Joel Lewis (PhD, Michigan State University, 2012) is an assistant professor of advertising at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dan Roberts

Dan Roberts (MS, University of Michigan, 2012) is a medical student at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine.

Jin Wu

Jin Wu (MA, University of Texas at Austin, 2012) is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jin-A Choi

Jin-A Choi (MA, University of Texas at Austin, 2012) is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin.